An imaging apparatus represented by a camera has been used for many systems, for example, a photographing system, an industrial measurement and object recognition system, and a vehicle hazard detection and security monitoring system. The imaging apparatus for use in these systems is required to obtain not only a subject image but also spatial information such as a distance and an eyesight direction.
A technique that can obtain such spatial information is taught by, for example, Patent Literature 1 and Non Patent Literatures 1 to 3. These literatures describe a technique that obtains information regarding an incident angle and a space of a light flux incident on an imaging element by executing a decoding process based on Fourier transform with the imaging element and a coded aperture pattern.
Another known technique uses an active spatial light modulator, that is, reconstructible into the coded aperture pattern, to decode images captured with different types of coded patterns for the purpose of improving image quality.
In such a technique, the spatial light modulator and the imaging element such as a CCD image sensor and a CMOS image sensor are arranged adjacent to each other to achieve a highly accurate process (for example, Patent Literature 1).